Time: 12:35 PM. Monday. First Week of the Semester.
Location: Main Campus – Main Campus Building, Western Courtyard.
The sleek, monochrome terminals emit a steady digital beep. These highly sophisticated machines are used to evaluate aptitude tests, assessments typically reserved for newcomers who are still uncertain about which clubs they ought to join.
During orientation, students already receive a memo summarized in a few words: they are on their own once inside the campus.
The system operates on the belief that adolescents require assisted automation to bypass their inherent lack of judgment; it is part of the program, designed to enhance critical thinking through assisted automation. Not to shield them from failure, but to prepare them for what is yet to come
These machines are kept inside the Main Campus Building, one of the most iconic structures at the heart of the main campus area. It is, perhaps, the only facility that still resembles a traditional school. Yet there are no classrooms. No lecture halls. Everything is conducted by machines, algorithms, and automations.
The building serves solely as a central hub, a place where students secure their belongings before venturing into the wider campus. Its hallways are always filled with motion, voices, and hurried footsteps. Despite its orderly façade, it is never quiet.
Today marks the first day of a new semester, and the halls are even busier than usual. Freshmen form long lines, waiting for their aptitude tests to be processed so they may finally begin moving freely throughout the campus.
The aptitude test is merely a recommendation, little more than a glorified survey, like those online personality quizzes whose results are rarely accurate. And yet, to the students, it is treated as a rite of passage, a symbol, the first step in what many call their journey of youth.
Within the outdoor covered hallways of the Main Campus Building, a second-year student sits quietly as the terminal processes his results. He is the only second-year at the terminals, a transfer student clearly taking the aptitude test that first-years complete during orientation.
There is nothing striking about him. His posture is correct. His face is clean. His hair is neatly combed. Even his uniform, an ash grey coat and cream trousers worn with careful precision, perhaps in an attempt to appear more presentable, only serves to make him more forgettable.
His collar is buttoned. His tie hangs straight. Standard in every way.
He does not slouch, nor does he sit too upright. Just... enough. Balanced. Unobtrusive. Practiced.
He looks like someone engineered to be forgotten by the system, not because he lacks identity, but because the institution no longer recognizes names. It recognizes function. Placement. Compliance.
Unlike the other freshmen around him, bright-eyed and eager, his expression remains neutral. He does not appear jaded, not quite. But there is a weight behind his gaze, a quiet resignation.
Unfamiliar with his new environment, but already at the midpoint of his formative arc. He no longer seeks to stand out. Only to find a place and remain undisturbed.
The screen blinks. A panel opens. A printed slip emerges with a soft mechanical click.
Final Recommendation: East Bloc Designation – Administrative, Ideological, or Auxiliary Placement (Suggested)
Evaluation Summary: Does not meet criteria for executive, technical, athletic, or cultural placements.
He reads it in silence.
It neither disappoints nor surprises him. It simply confirms what he already understands. He is not meant for leadership. Not for performance. Not for competition. The system has not chosen him. It has only filtered out what he could not be.
He takes the slip, slides it in his coat and leaves.
The covered terminal hall remains bright, quiet, and efficient. Other students sit at identical consoles, reviewing results, messaging recruiters, or already being approached by eager club representatives holding pamphlets that glow faintly with projected data relays.
Some are smiling. Some are already in an argument. Others browse offers with the speed of ambition. Every one of them looks like he or she knows where they belong.
The sophomore crosses the courtyard slowly, letting the world unfold around him. The deeper he walks, the more he notices.
Through his perspective, the first major thing he notices is the complete lack of adult presence.
Everyone here is a student. Some argue over supply allocations. Some authorize permit stamps. Others moderate traffic flows. A group is repairing a malfunctioning drone with synchronized gestures too practiced to be self-taught.
These are people just like him—his age, perhaps some a year older—yet instead of discussing class schedules, student dramas, or something they saw on social media, they are operating this school as if it were a functioning society.
The screens give orders. The kiosks issue documentation. The school runs but not like a school.
It functions like a city-state. And it is running entirely by itself.
Banners rustle on retractable masts. Students in color-coded sashes shout across pavilions. Automated trams whir past on magnetic tracks. Floating drones project multilingual caution signs as they reroute foot traffic while a repair team assesses a broken faucet beside the walkways. Two students in lab coats argue over power grid distribution using a full-scale hologram. Nearby, an Art Club delegation debates with the Culinary Guild over visual rights to the eastern mural wall.
The boy pauses near a fountain. He watches a trio of students dressed in white quietly discussing a disciplinary sanction. Their voices are low. Their phrases are bureaucratic. They are students—teenagers—but they speak with the calm authority of mid-level administrators. One wears a badge that reads: GSBC Subcommittee – Audit Tier 2. Another is already filing a digital report while walking.
Then, from a distance, he hears screaming.
He turns and sees a student dressed in a full black officer's uniform and a peaked cap: a Disciplinary Committee enforcer, sprinting in pursuit of what appears to be a delinquent carrying a bucket of paint.
The boy quickly picks up his pace. It feels like stopping is a trap and he does not want to get involved in trouble. It is his first day, after all.
He manages to pass the edge of the courtyard and begins ascending toward the monorail platform.
The noise of the Main Campus fades, replaced by wind over steel and the quiet hum of magnetic rail lines waiting in idle standby. The platform is sparsely occupied, just a few students from supply divisions and logistical club boarding to delivery goods.
The line heading for East Bloc runs less frequently. The signs above flicker. No student banners decorating this terminal. No recruiters waiting there.
He sits down on a bench and takes out the slip once again to take a look.
East Bloc.
Optional. Unpopular. Overlooked. The clubs here are not exactly listed. They do not have orientation tables, nor student liaisons—perhaps they do not need to.
Just one regulation line:
Orientation services are available at designated East Bloc administrative hubs.
He folds the slip and tucks it back inside his coat.
He can stay. Perhaps there are still open clubs back at the Main Campus. Archive teams, backline rosters, administrative support units. Positions that require warm bodies and polite compliance. Places that collect names, not people.
There are also maintenance clubs. Quiet work. Predictable routines. Places where one could disappear into useful obscurity.
But he does not want a role. He just wants a place where he could exist without performing.
Then he moves—neither with urgency nor hesitation, only with direction.
Time: 12:55 PM. Monday. First Week of the Semester.
Location: Main Campus – Monorail Platform, Central Transit Hub.
The monorail platform hums with subdued energy.
Students queue in quiet lines, eyes half-lidded from sleepless nights or the glow of their screens. Backpacks shift against pressed uniforms.
A few help booths stand nearby, assisting first-time students who do not exactly know where to go. Security personnel conduct routine inspections—meant to prevent the smuggling of forbidden items between sectors.
For something as simple as a train ride, it feels remarkably like crossing into another country.
Kalin High, vast as it is, makes time feel elastic. Even at this hour, some are already late, while others have been early since before the sun remembered to rise.
The boy passes through one of the scanners. It lets him through without pause. There is nothing remarkable about him, so security does not bother to notice.
He arrives at the platform—and waits.
Again, he listens to the conversations around him. One student argues with a vending drone over ration credits. Another sits beside a crate labeled Library Archives – Reassignment, reading from a manual with torn corners.
No one acknowledges him. Not a single look breaks his path.
Then the train arrives with a tired hiss. No announcement. Just a door that opens.
He steps toward the doors before he can change his mind. Not out of confidence but because the alternative—drifting without meaning—feels worse.
The monorail ride is not exactly long, yet it feels like crossing a line.
Outside the window, the vastness of the main campus unfolds. Modern buildings of glass and steel stretch across the horizon, connected only by walkways and asphalt roads. Beneath the monorail, automated cars and delivery vans weave through the lanes, ferrying supplies across the campus.
In the distance, a group of students rides on horseback—an image so anachronistic, it barely feels like a school at all.
The monorail passes beneath bridges that seem older than the school itself. Then it crosses the river, not wide, not deep, but definitive.
And beyond that crossing, everything begins to change.
The architecture loses its shine. Curves harden into corners. Glass yields to concrete. Pipes grow thicker, and towers shed their color. In the distance, ruins appear—old structures half-swallowed by time.
The East Bloc.
The second-year student enters a different territory. He has nothing to say, but in his eyes, there is a question:
Is this what the system meant for the uncategorized?
Time: 01:06 PM. Monday. First Week of the Semester.
Location: East Bloc – East Bloc Monorail Platform.
The monorail docks at the central platform of the East Bloc.
The second-year student unboards. He turns his head, taking in the surroundings. It is quieter than the central transit platform back at the Main Campus. And colder.
The sleek digital clock is gone, replaced by a round analog one. Each tick echoes faintly across the platform.
Then the monorail hums to life once more. It slides away, vanishing behind a rustling wall of pylons. The sound fades with it—a smooth electric whir dissolving into background noise: dripping pipes, analog ticks, and the distant clank of metal against concrete.
It is the last voice of modernity he will hear for a while.
No more screens sliding open. No more synthetic chimes announcing destinations. Just grey, layered, silent, and absolute.
The station lights blink behind him once, then cut out.
He slows, then reaches into his pocket—not because anything alerted him, but out of instinct. A small, familiar gesture. A search for orientation.
He pulls out his old flip phone. The scratched screen lights up weakly, its glow thin against the concrete walls.
No bars. No data. The East Bloc's signature dead zone swallows every signal except the faint, unreliable line reserved for basic calls—and even those seldom connect.
He scrolls out of habit. No messages. No map. No updates.
The phone is not malfunctioning; it is simply incompatible with the way this part of the campus operates.
The same home screen stares back at him—unchanged for years. Normally, it grounds him.
Here, it feels like a reminder:
He is carrying something meant for connection into a place that refuses to let anything connect.
He snaps it shut and pockets it again.
Ahead, the plaza stretches wide and hollow. The stone echoes too easily like it remembers things. There are no welcome arches, no digital signs, no flags.
Only buildings that are tall, worn, and expressionless. Paint peels at the edges. Slogans have faded under time and water. Pipes vein the upper levels. Pigeons clatter against scaffoldings. One lands atop a corroded lamp and stares.
The air smells of damp concrete and old insulation. Even the sky feels thinner.
The uncategorized student walks forward, cutting across the plaza. He sees another batch of students. There are those who wear stained workwear, hauling rods and gears. Others in silence, heads lowered and movements are automatic. They do not seem to be heading anywhere particular; they simply move.
He follows the signage until he reaches the center: a large metallic bulletin board bolted into the square, its frame already corroding at the edges.
The screen attached to it flickers once. It displays the only thing it needs to:
All Kalin High students are required to register with a recognized club before the end of Week One.
Failure to comply will result in administrative escalation and reassignment.
No list of clubs. No guidance. Only words telling everyone to comply.
He stands there, coat pockets weighed by stillness. The screen blinks again with indifference. It is, after all, part of the system that rejects him.
Then something shifts. Not around him. Within him.
He begins to feel it—not like a sound, not like a sight, but a pressure.
Not surveillance nor judgment, but presence.
From the place itself. The concrete does not creak. The wind does not change. But something in the air no longer feels empty.
He has been walking forward all day. And now, for the first time, he stops.
Not far from him stands a monument: a thick concrete slab, shaped into a fist raised upward. Cracks run along its surface, scars of erosion and time, yet it remains standing.
Then, a pigeon lands gently atop the cold stone fist.
In a world where the system forgets, the smallest signs of presence can become sacred.